Imperial Limousine

The Imperial Limousine: As Chrysler rolled into the 1950s, they were buoyed by strong sales and a booming economy. In 1949, Virgil Exner had joined Chrysler’s advanced styling department in a move that signaled company bosses were ready to move away from their somewhat stodgy image and into a bright new future as a style leader in the American marketplace. Exner still had to fight to wrest control of the entire design process from the engineering department, which he finally did achieve. Also during his time at Chrysler, Exner pursued his appetite for European design and developed a fruitful relationship with Gigi Segre of Carrozzeria Ghia of Italy; the two men working closely together on a number of projects including the Chrysler Ghia Specials and a series of truly spectacular show cars that finally put Chrysler’s “styled by engineers” reputation to bed. Exner’s work with Ghia helped to influence regular production cars as well. Although he was yet to be designing full production cars, Chrysler’s offerings in the early 1950s were already looking leaner and more graceful, with finer details and more cohesive style. Soon, Exner’s work hit the ground with one of his first full designs for Chrysler, the fabulous 1955 Imperial; the pinnacle of “The Forward Look” design theme. The Imperial nameplate had long been associated with the finest vehicles Chrysler had to offer, and from its first appearance in the 1920s, Imperial was synonymous with luxury, performance and exceptional build quality. An evolution of Imperial began in 1949 with Exner’s arrival as they expanded the range in an effort to better align themselves with Cadillac and Lincoln. By 1955, Chrysler would register Imperial as a separate marque. While they didn’t achieve the success they had hoped for (namely due to a lack of stand-alone Imperial showrooms) some rather incredible machines came out of Imperial over the next decade. In celebration of Imperial becoming a stand-alone brand, the new models featured Virgil Exner’s “Forward Look” styling, complete with a unique egg-crate split-grille treatment that set the Imperial apart. Borrowing from the Ghia-designed K-310 and d’Elegance concept cars, distinctive “gun sight” tail lights were fitted to the tops of the quarters. The standard range consisted of a sedan, hardtop and convertible while the most discerning buyers could opt for the costly but beautiful factory built 70-series Limousine and 8-passenger sedan. With these ultra-luxury machines, Imperial had hoped to steal some of the thunder from the dominant Cadillac Series 75 in the home-grown limousine market; achieving just that when Dwight D. Eisenhower selected a Derham-modified Crown Imperial as his presidential limousine in 1955.